


i would kill a dragon (for you)

by shineburn



Series: there is no other Troy (for me to burn) [1]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, One Shot, Suicidal Thoughts, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 07:01:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3165728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineburn/pseuds/shineburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s never been one for glibness and quick sarcasm — not decades in the past and certainly not now. But Alain… ah, Alain has always had a gift for drawing him into rash words and rash actions and the same is very much true in reverse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i would kill a dragon (for you)

**Author's Note:**

> I said that I’d never have the chutzpah to write AU fic for Ayrton Senna/Alain Prost ( **Prosenna** ). I lied. Or, more accurately, I said _‘fuck it, I’m old and curmudgeonly enough not to care if I’m being judged.’_ This is a small, out-of-order snippet, out of a much more complex universe. For now I’m keeping quiet on the details of the AU. It’s much more fun when the readers puzzle them out on their own.

_"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,_

_in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”_

**Pablo Neruda**

 

"You don’t understand why all of those people are so loyal. It isn’t about power, not really. Obviously not money."

Alain is only humoring him, he’s certain of it. There’s something like a noise of assent and Alain _is_ looking at him, instead of at his smartphone, but he can read doubt as if it’s written in bold letters on a blank page. It always settles between his friend’s brows and nests there, drawing the skin round the eyes into tight, shadowed folds that grow deeper with each passing year. _‘Another idea you can’t tell me much about?’_ , those weathered features seem to say. They’ve had talks much like this one — long and short, but always vague on his own part. Something testy is always close to the surface, close to asking if all four-time Formula One World Champions have a problem with understanding what _‘on a need to know basis’_ means.

He always holds his peace, swallows thickly and marks another moment of faltering trust in the ongoing tally inside his head. He’s never been one for glibness and quick sarcasm — not decades in the past and certainly not now. But Alain… _ah,_ Alain has always had a gift for drawing him into rash words and rash actions and the same is very much true in reverse. It had been a miserably rainy day when he’d tainted his victor’s grace with barbed insults about lack of talent and switching cars, after all.

"They already have more power than almost anyone else around them, Money, wealth, women or men, according to taste…. that comes naturally when you’re serving a dictator. It isn’t a reward for what they do _.”_

He pauses for a moment, looks down at the polished, heavy oakwood table between them. His coffee has gone cold, but he takes a sip regardless, tolerating the bitter taste and the feel of grit under his tongue.

"Fear isn’t the answer either. One day, you stop being afraid and stand up for yourself." Spoken softly, oh so softly — enough that most can easily miss the cold knife’s edge in his voice, dulled but never completely gone when he talks about these things. _‘A right self-help manual on legs you are’_ , the MCTC’s commander had once sneered at him and he can see just the slightest flicker of that in Alain’s eyes now. To his credit, his old rival is tactful enough to cover it up with a question, even if what he’s hearing so far sounds like a pack of common platitudes. 

"What is it? If these people are like you" — _how typical of Alain to be delicate about this thing!_ — “but they’re given much less freedom, what keeps them from just…” Leaving? Absconding with as much information as they can cram into their skulls and selling it to the highest bidder? Killing their direct superiors? Alain himself obviously isn’t certain, ending the sentence with a half-hearted hand gesture that might mean all of these things and more.

"It’s love, of course." 

And _that_ gets the expected reaction. Alain’s eyes go wide for a second, shoulders rigid and back stiffening, head jerking up in a slightly undignified manner. The old champion is off-kilter, confounded and confused — each flicker of emotion and stray thought translating into expressions that he can accurately read and interpret, in that fraction of a second between instinctive reaction and conscious insight. _‘You don’t know how much you’re giving me’_ , he’d quietly told Alain, years ago, while lying on a hospital bed, both of his legs broken and encased in plaster. His old rival hadn’t quite twigged how deeply the meaning of that went and that much is true still.

He smiles, just a little bit, enough to reassure. It works — Alain relaxes, likely thinking he’s being the butt of some immature joke right now. That would be preferable to the truth, wouldn’t it?

"Love?" A small, disbelieving snort. Alain tries to keep himself from smiling and fails rather badly. "What does that have to do with anything? Some of the things you say make no sense, Ayrton."

 _Ayrton._ How unsettling it always is to hear that name aimed at him, even if the pronunciation leaves much to be desired. It feels awkward, like a jacket two sizes too big, slipping off his shoulders, hanging loose under the arms and flapping ungracefully at the waist. _Not me_ , something primal wants to revolt in him every single time, but he firmly crushes it under a mental heel. He — _Ayrton_ — will probably never get fully used to it, even if he wears a dead man’s face and speaks of a dead man’s memories. Still, he refuses to be just a string of numbers anymore and the name his parents gave him is downright alien in its distant unfamiliarity. _'O you, of no house and kin, of no country or name',_ the Tibetan wailing laments for dead newborns had gone, leaving him pale and ravaged under Lhasa’s colorful banners, tears freezing on his cheeks and eyelashes.  

"Yes, love", he answers quietly, around the painful lump that has lodged itself in his throat. Thankfully, his eyes are still dry and he — _Ayrton, remember, **Ayrton**_ — intends to keep them that way. Alain is being patronizing, but this is safe and familiar, if still frustrating — the sort of thing that makes him feel he’s _real_ , instead of some warped fever-dream, gone with the dawn. There’s an indulgent look in those pale eyes, as if Alain’s gotten more than used to all sorts of oddities and strange leaps in logic. “Let me explain first and then you can tell me how wrong I am.”

"Go ahead. I’m listening." 

His friend makes good on the words, settling his phone to the side, ignoring the reply he was typing out on Twitter, twining his fingers and resting his chin on them. _‘Serves me right for showing him how to make an account’,_ he’d thought on more than one occasion. Still, it had been worth it, if only for the expression on Alain’s face when his squeaky-clean Twitter presence had _mysteriously_ followed several porn actresses and BDSM advice accounts overnight.  

He takes another sip of coffee, grimaces and gently nudges the cup to the side. When his eyes meet Alain’s own, Ayrton’s resolve wavers for just a heartbeat, but he forces himself to speak, against all remaining misgivings. They _both_ need to know this, lest they warp and crush each other again, innocently and unwittingly this time round.

"Imagine yourself in their situation", Ayrton murmurs, voice low and almost tender, clashing with the hard, unyielding look in his dark eyes. "Imagine you were always different, something to be pitied and feared at the same time. Imagine you were locked away, for your own safety, as they put it." It’s easier this way — easier to speak in second person, when he doesn’t have to make it about himself, to relieve the beatings, the months in isolation, the subtle manipulation, the constant gaslighting, the lies and truths mixed together, making him doubt even the most basic things. A muscle twitches violently in his jaw and he has to take a long, deep breath, raking calloused fingers through his hair.   

"All you are to these people is a living weapon, a potential super-soldier. A mind to be made into an organic computer." How gentle and heartbroken his voice is, even as old fury pulls his features into taut, harsh lines, flesh stretched thin over bone. "Then… someone comes along. Someone who doesn’t doubt or fear what you are, who looks you in the eye and gives you their hand. Who doesn’t think of you just in terms of what you will do for them." 

He moves now, like water and lightning, getting out of the chair and hoisting himself up on the table, striding across it with sock-covered feet. Alain barely has any time to gasp or move backward when Ayrton kneels on top of him, pressing him roughly into the chair, using his greater weight to pin him down and keep him from moving.

"What are you…?"

 _"Hush."_ Chapped lips move carefully over Alain’s own, making him freeze in place, breath faltering in his throat, a jolt of sensation seeming to push him forward an inch or two. Ayrton would have perhaps smiled, if this situation hadn’t been so dire. As it stands, his mouth delicately traces the line of Alain’s jaw, before slowly kissing the shell of his right ear.

"They’re your guiding light, when all you can see is despair", he whispers, warm breath tickling Alain’s skin, one knee sinking into the chair’s soft fabric, the other resting between Alain’s legs. Fingertips lightly trace a pattern over Alain’s brow, as if trying to smooth the deeply-set wrinkles there, touch soft and careful. "They treat you like a human being and for this you love them. You _adore_ them. In the end, you would do anything for them.”

It’s all a bit more complicated than that, but Alain doesn’t need to know the ins-and-outs of how one turns an angry, defiant hellcat of a person into a willing and even _happy_ lapdog. It’s a grim, soul-crushing thing to know, much less experience directly and the marks it’s left on him will never fade away, no matter how much support, kindness, therapy, medication and normalcy he’s offered in this life. At night, he sleeps on a bed of murdered hopes and the one reason he hasn’t yet done something with his razor in the mornings has nothing to do with the tattered shreds of his faith. It stands right in front of him. 

"If the Home Office asks me to do something I disagree with, I can just tell them to fuck themselves." Which he’s done, on multiple occasions, much the frustration of one Theresa May, in his head forever dubbed _‘that incompetent woman.’_ “However, if you were to ask for the same thing…” He smiles, hard and tense, the expression looking more like a threat display than anything else, lips pulled taut over teeth. “I would think about it very seriously.” And in the end, he would do far more than merely _think_ about it.

The realization is now dawning on Alain’s own features, something like cold horror in his eyes. _'Don't show fear, he's been trained to go for the jugular',_ the old champion had been glibly advised, before he’d first walked in that small hospital room, years ago. Alain had kept his nerve then and Ayrton’s desperate, self-conscious barbs hadn’t struck anything soft. Now, on the other hand…

Ayrton bridges the gap and kisses Alain once more. He’s isn’t gentle or careful this time, teeth sinking into Alain’s lower lip and drawing a little blood, noses colliding awkwardly, fingers fisting into grey, thinning hair and yanking Alain’s head backwards. _‘You have no idea what lengths I would go to if you are the one who asks’,_ he wants to say in words, but settles on making it clear with actions instead. His knee grinds hard against Alain’s crotch, lips and teeth and tongue marring the skin on the other’s throat. He’s done this before, far too many times to count, with men and women whose faces blur together in his mind right now — for pleasure, for information, for the sake of forgetting everything at least a few moments.

One of Ayrton’s hands moves between their bodies, pressing firmly between Alain’s legs, adding more friction with each motion and eliciting a string of moans and garbled curses. Fingers wrap around the thick fabric, drawing him out with each pass, even as Ayrton’s teeth scrape over Alain’s collarbone and nip sharply at the place where his throat curves toward the shoulder. _'Just a little more'_ , he tells himself, even through the blood pounding ferociously in his loins, urging him on, _isn’t this what you’ve wanted for so long_ , no matter what. _‘Just a little bit more.’_ Alain is starting to move roughly underneath him, fighting to pull himself up, each motion easy to read. _'And…. now.'_

"Stop", Alain gasps between hitched breaths, finally getting a grip on his reactions. Both hands grasp Ayrton’s shoulders and try to push him off. "Ayrton, stop this!"

And in the next second he does, pulling away and roughly burying the small flicker of disappointment, keeping it from showing on his face. His breathing is harsh and ragged, but he quickly brings it under control, both hands coming to rest on the back of the chair, above Alain’s head. His cheeks are slightly flushed, his large ears and the tip of his nose have most definitely gone red and his eyes are burning, equal parts grim and pleased at having gotten his bloody point across.

"Anything you ask", Ayrton answers carefully, a mirthless smile still tugging at the corners of his lips. Alain looks much, _much_ less composed, chest still rising and falling wildly, hair completely askew, the fingers of one hand wiping a little blood from his swelling lip. For a moment, it almost looks like he’ll try to wrench himself out of the chair, regardless of who’s still straddling him, before he settles for a withering glare.

"Get off."

"Not until we make this thing perfectly clear."

"Are you starting to molest your friends when you want to prove a point now?" The words come sharp and fast, Alain replacing shock and confounding desire with anger, something much more comfortable and familiar. 

"You should have stopped me sooner if you thought I was molesting you." He’s calm and unruffled, letting Alain’s anger buffet him like the waves used to strike the shore at Angra, so long ago, on a beach as empty as the ends of the world. "Ask and I will comply."

"If I’d ask you to jump out that window", Alain snaps, shoulders straight and rigid, flinging one arm toward the large, floor-to-ceiling window, "would you do it?"

"It depends on the reason and the result. Doing something foolish just for the sake of doing it makes no sense." Ayrton looks at Alain through dark, thick eyelashes, unruly curls of hair falling across his forehead. "If jumping could accomplish one of your goals, however… that’s another story." 

He sees Alain flinch back and regrets his words, but obstinately refuses to take them back. “You have to understand the sort of power you have at your fingertips. You’ve done good things with it so far, but you can easily turn it toward destruction, if that’s what you want.”

He’s witnessed the same thing, again and again — desert warlords, totalitarian ideologues, despots with their own little corner of the world to control and dominate, surrounded by grim-faced youths with old eyes, who, to a one, would take a bullet for their masters. Or who would murder anyone deemed to be even the slightest sort of threat. For all that it would have made things easier for both of them at the start, Alain saved him from a similar fate when he refused to give him orders, to impose the sort of strict, harsh military regimen that he’d lived through since infancy. And even as he’d struggled with a life where no one was drawing clear lines in the sand for him, Ayrton had been immensely grateful as well.

The anger on Alain’s face is already starting to drain away, seeming to leave behind even deeper ruts carved into the skin. _‘We seem capable only of hurting each other’,_ Ayrton thinks mournfully, keeping the old grief buried underneath steel-willed determination and a stubborn mantra of _'this for the best.'_

"Don’t put this sort of thing on my shoulders, Ayrton, please." If he was younger, Alain might have looked mutinous at this, but now he just seems old and tired and plaintive, gazing at Ayrton almost as if he desperately wants some sort of elaborate _‘gotcha’_ to come out of his sleeve. “What you’re saying… I don’t think I know how to deal with this.”

"It’s simple", he murmurs gently, even though what he wants to say is _'I'm sorry'_ or _'forgive me'_ or _'you don't deserve any of this bullshit.'_ But life, he’s found out at such a high price, certainly isn’t always about what one _wants._

"Just be aware of this…. and remember to be yourself, as you’ve been up until now." He reaches down, sweeping several strands of gray hair in his fingers, carefully twirling them between index and forefinger. This is what saved him, what kept him _human_ — and he has no doubt that it was the Home Office’s ploy all along. _'Make him latch onto someone decent and respected, someone he remembers. The last thing we need is a kid so bright and open to influence in the hands of terrorists or some fucking arsehole in Turkmenistan.'_ For all his faults, his propensity to be selfish and his desire to be liked by the media, Alain Prost is fundamentally a good man. Exactly the kind that balks at notions such as shoring up his business interests via threats and murder, or using a young meta-human’s brilliant mind and military training to make himself powerful or feared.

"I don’t think it’s as simple as you’re making it out to be." Alain still looks rattled, one hand almost instinctively coming to rest on Ayrton’s left shoulder, an undercurrent of tension humming through him. Alain has every reason to be doubtful, of course — to second-guess his words and actions up until now, worried that some offhanded thing he might have said in the heat of the moment got taken literally and set deep roots. Still, that’s the very _last_ thing Ayrton wants.

"If you’re taking yourself to task, stop it right now." It comes out more like an order than a request, Ayrton’s forehead resting lightly against Alain’s own, long lashes brushing over the other’s cheeks. "You haven’t done anything wrong, I promise. It’s just better if we both know where we stand."

That gets something like a snort from Alain, who forgoes any and all commentary, instead pointing at the both of them, one still straddling the other’s hips. Ayrton smiles warmly at this, like the sun coming out after a snowstorm, features relaxing and eyes crinkling at the corners.

"Be glad I’m not working for some delusional Middle-Eastern holy warrior", he chuckles low in his throat, leaning forward and kissing the deeply wrinkled skin between Alain’s brows, grinning boyishly when he feels those muscles twitch and relax under his mouth.

"That’s supposed to reassure me?" Alain is still trying to be cross, but it isn’t really working — especially not with the bone-dry amusement in his voice and the way he looks up at Ayrton’s face, only his mouth still pursed in a thin, disapproving line.

"It’s working for the likes of MI5, isn't it?" He knows there was an agreement between them and Alain, when the Prost family took him in, more than five years ago — old problems and debts to the British financial authorities written off, most dating back to the ignominious collapse of Prost Grand Pix. Still, it doesn’t matter any longer. Whatever backroom deals put him on this path saved his life, in the end.

"Those people…" Alain grimaces, almost as if he’s felt some unpleasant smell wafting up from an open sewer. "You never really know what you’re going to get with them."  

"Let them play their games. As long as we both know what those are, there’s no danger." There’s so much honest, naked, _vulnerable_ faith in his voice now, as he gazes in Alain’s eyes, features open and earnest, both hands cupping the other’s cheeks. He might not be able to speak of state secrets and things that could put the entire family in danger, but in this thing he’ll hide nothing _._

When he first understood how he’d been manipulated, Ayrton had been nearly incandescent with rage — an eighteen year-old boy with the mind of an an adult man, climbing onto a snow mobile, gunning the engine and risking his life on the winding trails in the Swiss Alps, racing on narrow bands of rock, above thousand-foot drops. Then had come the doubt and the self-loathing — was this what he’d endured so much for, refusing to compromise his principles, even in the face of torture? He’d refused to commit murder, to order others to kill or to make predictions about the movements of militants targeted by Her Majesty’s armed forces. In this life of crushed expectations, only his remembered morals seemed to make any difference. He’d cursed and fought tooth and nail against his captors, only to discover that the worst danger lay in liberty and freedom of choice.

 _'I will not kill for the British state'_ , he’d bitterly admitted to himself in those cold, miserable nights, staring down at his palms, even as the New Year’s revelers flooded St Moritz with happiness and light. Alain had tried to pry him out of his shell and Ayrton had joined the festivities merely for his sake. _'But I would kill for this man. If he was ever put in danger. If he ever needed such a thing.'_

If ever there was a revelation that could shatter a man, this must be it. 

"I would never ask you to do anything that would hurt you. Or others."

Alain’s voice is slow and careful, breaking through his grim thoughts. The other is matching his laser-like gaze with one of his own, fingers squeezing Ayrton’s shoulder almost hard enough to bruise. “You don’t need to say anything more. I understand.” 

He promised himself that he wouldn’t cry. _He promised._ All for naught, though — the tears are blooming in the corners of his eyes and he can do no more to stop them than he can march outside and just order the rain to stop. The rough-edged emotion makes Ayrton’s shoulders shake and he has to sink his fingers violently into the chair’s fabric just to keep himself from leaning all of his weight on Alain. His former rival pats him on the back, slightly awkward in his motions, but no less earnest.

 _"Thank you."_ Somehow, he manages to keep his voice steady, even with the tears blurring his vision, the tip of his nose touching Alain’s own. Ayrton wants, for a moment, just to lean in and kiss him again. He wants to move his lips over shoulders  and chest and stomach, take him fully in his mouth and make him moan and buck wildly in this damned chair, until all he can whisper and shout is his name.

The sound of the main door swishing open breaks the moment like a thunderclap and Alain is moving quickly, pushing him off, something like panic on his features. Ayrton obliges and lifts himself out of the chair, masking the hurt and the disappointment, as he’s learned to do so well these last few years. It’s only the housekeeper returning with the groceries, her plump cheeks and motherly smile easing the tension as she walks into the living room. Ayrton allows her to ruffle his hair, eyes meeting Alain’s own over the woman’s shoulder. 

For a second, there’s a mess of emotions written there, before Alain composes himself — enough doubt and regret and obstinate denial to make Ayrton’s head hurt if he tries to process it all in one go. _‘I’m not gay’,_ Alain had once slurred, when Ayrton had kissed him the first time, both of them more than a little drunk on red wine. _'This thing doesn't mean I'm gay',_ his eyes seemed to say now as well, even if they wavered for one heartbeat. 

 _‘Who said anything about being gay?’,_ Ayrton wants to answer, regardless of who else will hear him. _‘Bisexuality is a thing that exists, you know.’_ But he swallows and holds his peace once more. 

After all, he’s learned that life isn’t always about what one _**wants.**_


End file.
